The satellite acts were no doubt part of the reason Billy Graham himself was less impressive. It's hard to have an extended spiritual experience when the people in charge of programming are shifting gears every 20 minutes. And then the slick production values were kind of distracting. The sessions, which were projected onto several large screens, were split by flashy cutaway graphics that helpfully identified the people onstage, but not too helpfully made you feel as if you were watching some bizarre Protestant version of the Grammys.

The whole thing cost $6.8 million to produce, Bishop Roderick Caesar ("from right here in Queens") informed the audience on Day 2, and the Billy Graham Crusade recovered 45 percent of the budget via donations. If attendees wanted to contribute, they could render unto Caesar and the crusade the other 55 percent via cash, check or credit card, which many people happily did. "A complete audit of every penny received will be published in the New York Times," said Caesar, "because we have nothing to hide."

As with most affairs where money changes hands, there appeared to be a fringe market around the Graham enterprise. In between sessions, attendees were encouraged to buy books from the Crusade bookstore including a coffee-table volume that offered a photographic history of Graham's various crusades throughout the years. Signage for Snapple was everywhere and the concession stands served only Pepsi, lending unwitting credence to any conspiracy theories about the inherent evil of Coca-Cola. There was also the occasional middle-aged woman with a cooler offering black-market bottles of Poland Spring water at the cut-rate price of "One dollar, one dollar!" But for a gathering of this size with absolutely no drunks and the world's only immaculate portable toilets, the program officials and cops on hand appeared to consider the sales a tolerable infraction.

But the odd hodgepodge of elements that made up the revival, as produced by the reverend and his associates, was not nearly as odd as the audience that showed up to witness its execution. For every variation of Christianity that exists, there were representative members in attendance trying to convert every other element to their own special brand, either passively, aggressively or passive-aggressively. Their pamphlets ranged from lists of New Age-y feel-good aphorisms to dark apocalyptic tracts ("It has been shown that the United States is the power represented by the beast with the lamblike horns") to pseudo-patriotic brochures, including one titled "Remember," the cover of which was a shot of the New York skyline with two large tablets bearing the Ten Commandments superimposed over the area where the Twin Towers once stood.

The most friendly group was a community of men and women with long hair (sometimes held back with headbands made of natural-looking fibers) and sporty clothing in neutral beige, brown or olive colors who call themselves the Twelve Tribe Communities. They said they do not ascribe to any specific denomination, are not too keen on organized religion and live according to the principles of Christianity. One young woman I spoke with, an ex-Green Party activist who had done some work for FAIR, insisted, however, that they were not a "hippie commune" (although she later conceded a few were "ex-hippies"), their outposts in Vermont, drum circles and spontaneous Frisbee games notwithstanding.

At the other end of the spectrum were two men and a woman from "A True Church" in Lake Hughes, Calif., who were standing behind police barriers with signs that said "God Caused 9/11" and "Billy Graham Is Going to HELL." The apparent ringleader, a skinny, middle-aged guy with a scruffy strawberry blond beard and wraparound sunglasses (and ironically named Darwin), spent a few minutes angrily explaining to me that Graham was representative of a false Christianity, one that was too inclusive for his tastes and accommodated too many people who did not belong. Roman Catholics, for example, were going to hell. "The Bible says they follow demons." Darwin had gotten into a screaming match with a slightly larger man just before I walked over to chat, so I wasn't particularly inclined to ask what he thought about liberal, agnostic New Yorkers. Other key tenets of Darwinian thought, according to the "A True Church" brochure: Christmas is a lie. Women are to be silent in church. And true believers hate. The police barriers were suddenly reassuring.

Somewhere in the middle of the friendly-angry continuum but not exactly evangelical was the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, two of whose members, ages 24 and 22, were walking in front of me into the park on Saturday carrying their own signage ("The Bible taken literally is a HORROR!"). Joey, the curly-haired 24-year-old and the more vocal of the two, wore glasses and a "Communist Revolutionary" T-shirt. Alya, the 22-year-old, had pink streaks in her half-blonde, half-dark hair and a patch on the back of her black hoodie that said, "Fuck Sexism." That provoked a few disapproving stares from mothers with kids and junior-size Bibles in tow.

Incredibly, Joey picked an argument with some of the Twelve Tribe members -- his primary object of protest being the Bush administration. As his voice got increasingly louder and more adamant, an irritated, nonhippie passerby sputtered, "Yeah, he's the anti-Christ!" When I asked Joey why he so strongly identified Christians as de facto Bush supporters, he was more thoughtful and conceded that some of them weren't. "Even Billy Graham has his differences with Bush," he said. "But Billy Graham's not in charge."

Graham had not made any political statements one way or the other, though he disconcertingly kept repeating the mantra "War does not increase death" in his sermons, presumably to highlight the inevitability of death, but effectively making war sound not so bad as previously thought. While not the most hostile or confrontational of the aggressive evangelicals by a long shot, Joey and Alya stood out with their punk aesthetic. "How are people here reacting to you?" I asked. "We're getting literature stuffed in our pockets as we hold our signs up," said Alya with a wry smile.

With so many diverse constituencies claiming Graham and, by extension, Graham's God, as uniquely their own and Graham trying to cater to all of them, the New York Crusade was a sort of spiritual three-ring circus. But it was also a powerful antidote to the naive, monolithic portrayals of Christian evangelicals in America that would have them all looking and acting like the ones I knew growing up -- such as my Bob Jones University-educated teacher in fifth grade who spent the first hour or so of every day reading Bible stories to me and the other 29 students in my class, despite the fact that the school was not parochial, and made us memorize woefully out-of-date street terms for obscure drugs that were probably not even available in the state, lest any "pushers" offer us "angel dust" after Sunday school. Or the music minister for whom I sang -- badly -- in an a cappella group that favored black spirituals despite the fact that my church openly ostracized African-Americans.

In reality, the future of evangelical America probably looks less like the evangelical America that voted for Bush, wants to see the Ten Commandments affixed to the courthouse steps and would overturn Roe vs. Wade at the first opportunity, and more like the Billy Graham Greater New York Crusade: diverse, a bit chaotic and increasingly more aware of pop culture, technology and commercial and cultural realities. The result may be anticlimactic, but it's a lot more interesting than those old-timey revivals.

Back in Manhattan, the city was clearing out after the Gay Pride Parade and as I walked back to my apartment, I thought of the last person I saw before heading into the subway to Queens: a guy with short, bleached-blond hair, a couple of body piercings and a baggy black kilt with zippers. Three friends were with him, two wearing matching T-shirts with little rainbow crosses on the breast. His was different. It said "Gay Pastor."

Recent Stories